Apple Now EA's Largest Retail Sales Partner

As highlighted by VentureBeat, Electronic Arts yesterday announced in its quarterly earnings call that it is now earning more through Apple's App Store than any other retail outlet, including its own Origin digital store.

Strong performance of freemium mobile games like The Simpsons: Tapped Out, The Sims Freeplay, and Real Racing 3 helped EA post a strong $90 million in sales on smartphones and tablets. All three titles performed at record bests: The Simpsons: Tapped Out had its biggest quarter ever for sales, driving game Real Racing 3 reached 45 million downloads and has 2 million active users, and according to CEO Peter Moore, The Sims Freeplay was among the highest-grossing games on iPad.

“Our quarter was notable was for its strong digital sales,” EA chief operating officer Peter Moore said in a conference call with investors. “To that end, Apple was EA’s biggest retail partner as measured by sales. That is a first.”

EA was also the #1 global publisher in the iOS games market for the June quarter, and launched its Origin gaming service on OS X earlier this year.

Anybody know how Venturebeat calculated $90 mil for smartphone/tablets? The only $90 mil figure I see is for PC net rev a year ago

You're not gonna have AAA game development at a Freemium - $5 pricepoint. Even at the current $60 console pricepoint, publishers like EA are already getting squeezed and trying to raise the price of games to $80

You need to play more iOS games if you think freemium is all there is to offer.

For every Clash Of Clans there is a Soul Calibur.

And it's not a replacement for console gaming, but it is highly disruptive for iOS to gain console like functionality with controller and air play support because there is a growing gaming demographic that is vey mobile oriented.

I don't expect "The Last of Us" on iOS anytime soon but that level of development is coming, even is Sony and Nintendo don't like it.

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